Hello everyone! This is Elena from Gaia Storm TCG and welcome to another article here at CCG. Today I want to talk about the Expanded format and the possible consequences of the latest Pokémon Regional which took place last weekend at Collinsville. Just as a bit of context, Expanded is an environment where basically anything can happen because the card pool is just too wide, ranging from Black & White Base set to the most recent one (Sword and Shield in this case). One can never prepare or tech enough against the metagame because options are endless. And yet many players consider the format to be unfair, unfriendly and have raised their voices asking for Pokémon to take a step forward and start banning cards. But what is exactly the problem we are trying to solve?

The issue with Expanded is precisely that every imaginable strategy is stronger. You want to play ADP? Cool, add some Double Dragon Energies to make the Altered Creation GX a turn 1 reality. You want to play Zacian? No problem, just put together some Max Elixirs and you can attack before your opponent even notices. Mewtwo? It has access to every attacker ever. And the list of examples just goes on an on. But of course, the same logic applies for non-aggressive strategies such as stall or mill or lock decks. And when you are in a format where those types of erosive approaches exist, it is difficult to think that the game is funny.

If we take a look at the decks that were able to get to Day 2, we can see that most of the decks belonged to this group. In fact, 7 out of 8 decks from the top cut tried to create a board state where the opponent couldn’t play… so I would say that the figures speak by themselves. The deck that was able to win the event and had lots of placements was Trevenant Dusknoir Milotic, which is a nightmare to go against. The sequence is something like this. In their first turn they may use the GX attack of Gengar & Mimikyu to prevent you from setting up. Next, they will sacrifice some Milotics to power up a Trevenant Dusknoir and attack, leaving you with only 2 random cards in hand. If they drew well, they can even set up a Garbodor to turn down all abilities. It does not sound like a lot of fun.

The rest of the decks are not much merciful either. Vileplume-based decks were a major contender in the tournament, since this annoying Stage 2 prevents the opponents from using items as soon as it hits the field. Another strategy that was terrible to many players was Dolls Stall, which focuses on denying prize after prize with a never-ending army of PokéDolls and Robo Substitutes.  And if you’ve played against Dolls in Standard, you can imagine the pain of facing the same deck with twice the power and the recycling options. And lastly, let’s not forget the “can’t touch me” kind of decks like Hoopa Pyroar, that just use a Pokémon with a Safeguard ability that can’t be touched and wait until the deck out.

So no wonder after all of these explanation why there are so many players that want Pokémon to do something. However, it won’t be easy to leverage all those strategies and the same time. Pokémon has been trying to adjust its ban list by using a logic that is “if it doesn’t allow to play the game, then we will remove it”. And to be fair, many of the decks right now allow you to play but just a bit. If Pokémon truly wanted to create a healthier and more varied environment, they will suddenly need to take massive actions and ban (or restrict) a considerable number of cards.  I am very curious to see their next announcement since I am sure they will try to limit many of the strategies we’ve covered today. Thanks for reading!